Editorial: Nuke dump legal twists take a turn

Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1998 | 11:40 a.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court sidestepped Monday getting involved directly in the thorny debate over storing this nation's nuclear waste. But the Supreme Court gave Nevada an additional argument against sending nuclear waste to Nevada immediately -- the Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling that found the Energy Department did not have to start collecting the waste because it has not yet settled on a place to store it.

If there is a message in this it should be that Congress and the nuclear power industry should give up on efforts to send nuclear waste to a so-called "temporary" repository at the Nevada Test Site under the ruse that federal law required storage by 1998. While the nuclear power industry has kept referring to its proposal in Congress to send waste to the Test Site as a "temporary" measure, no one seriously believed that once the waste came to Nevada it would ever leave this state again.

The nuclear utility industry, which has gotten every imaginable break from Congress and the Energy Department in its efforts to send its waste here, actually has had the gall to suggest that the Energy Department's refusal to accept the waste resulted in a dangerous situation. Despite its protests, the industry is the one to blame for creating a dangerous situation. It has insisted on targeting this state as a dumpsite despite independent scientific evidence showing Nevada is an environmentally unsound place to store nuclear waste.

One unfortunate consequence of the lower court's decision is that the Energy Department can still be sued for monetary damages by those who relied on the 1998 deadline. It is never easy to sue the federal government and walk away with a large verdict. But a lawsuit, and the specter of huge financial losses, could act as a further deterrent to the Energy Department to conduct truly independent studies and determine that Yucca Mountain is not suitable.

This latest legal twist regarding the disposition of nuclear waste won't be the definitive word, not by a long shot. But for those doomsayers who assert Nevada doesn't stand a chance, it shows that not even the potent nuclear power industry can force the Energy Department to accept nuclear waste when there is no existing scientific plan that can safely store it.